


Keep the Key

by eretria



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Skin Hunger, very mild sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eretria/pseuds/eretria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Why do you hide it?" </i>
</p><p> </p><p> -- James had always liked Fiona's ability to see through him. Until she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep the Key

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a stand-alone. It was originally planned to be the introductory chapter to a much longer story called "Prayer to Saint Michael" that is still a work in progress.   
> It was originally meant to be co-written, yet after I lost my co-writer to another fandom (it's all good, I'm happy to see she was happier there than here), I found myself a bit stumped on the intricate plot. So, the 30 k WiP is still a WiP two years later - and I'd rather keep it to myself than post something that I cannot promise to finish in a certain time-frame. Knowledge of the WiP is not necessary to (hopefully!) enjoy this glimpse into James, however.

_No monkey has died during isolation._

Harry Harlow, 1965 

He should have known better than to wait until the last day to see the exhibit, James thought with a stifled groan when he saw the line of people queuing in front of the Queen's Gallery. Even with tickets booked in advance, it would take him a good hour just to reach the ticket counter.

The afternoon was grey and drizzly, the exact kind of weather tourists from all over the world usually associated with London. The tall trees shading the gallery's portico entrance were shedding their leaves in shades of yellow and orange and provided the only dots of colour in an otherwise bleak vista. The crowd in front of him had agreed, it seemed, upon a uniform grey and black as an umbrella colour. There was only one, a good forty people ahead of him, that provided a splash of colour. A bright green one with polka dots on it.

Not easy being green, James thought, and hid a grin in his scarf. The damp cold had already begun to creep beneath the collar of his coat, making him glad he'd decided to wear the scarf.

He opened his own umbrella and rolled his eyes at himself. It was an unsurprising black.

James Hathaway lauded the owner of the Kermit umbrella in front of him, dug in his coat pocket for his mp3 player and settled in for a long wait.

 _Leonardo_ , he thought, _you’d better be worth it._

***

Leonardo was.

The rooms in the Queen's Gallery alternated between a subdued dark olive green and a radiant royal red, each colour setting off da Vinci's anatomical drawings. The collection was curated well, each of the rooms highlighting a period of da Vinci's work, from the first glimmerings of an interest in anatomy to the first brilliant studies of a human skull, and, after a lull of about a decade to the full extent of his genius ranging from the famous picture of a foetus in the womb to the examination of the flow of blood through the aortic valve. The latter, James had read, was an insight that would not be observed again for 400 years. 

He stopped in front of a drawing titled _'The hemisection of a man and woman in the act of coition'_. Quite explicit for the time it was created and, like all the other drawings it contained an amount of detail that made the viewer wonder just how detailed the artist's research had been.

Nevertheless, James had never got over the nearly reverent shudder that coursed through him when looking at exhibits past a certain age. This was the work of a true genius, and the thought that more than five centuries ago, da Vinci had touched the very paper that lay before him, blew his mind. Up close, it became easy to imagine the artist peering at the bodies in front of him, vivisecting to get close to the object of his desire, to get the most accurate picture possible. Had da Vinci had his own Burke and Hare, murdering and selling him the bodies like it had happened in Edinburgh in 1827? Had da Vinci arranged the bodies to be able to create drawings like the one James was staring at now? He shuddered again and wondered if the people back then had seen da Vinci's reasoning as quite so noble as modern science did now. Everything got a different spin once several hundred years had cast their well-meaning cloak over the facts.

"James?"

A voice startled him from his contemplation and he looked up, blinking several times. The voice had been female, but he couldn't pinpoint its owner straight away.

"James?" Gentle pronunciation, Irish lilt. It sounded suspiciously like --

"It hasn't been that long, has it?" Fiona McKendrick asked, a smile tugging at her lips.

Damn it. James felt all the muscles in his jaw tense in a headache-inducing fashion. Of all the people he could have met, it had to be her. In front of _this_ particular drawing.

"Fiona," he said, trying with all his might to sound pleasantly surprised and fight down the flush that was rising up his neck. "Fancy meeting you here."

They'd gone to various exhibits several times when they'd been together. Always in London. Never in Oxford, despite the Ashmolean offering many things James would like to see. But Fiona had insisted on going to London because it was more anonymous.

Well, look at the big, bad, anonymous city now. He couldn't even go to an exhibition without meeting someone he knew.

"Once more, with feeling," she urged, her smile growing wider.

Despite having been caught, he grinned back involuntarily. "Caught me unaware," he admitted.

"Always the best way."

They were pushed away from the hemisection by the insistent crowd that noticed the lack of attention and immediately used their momentary weakness to get close to the drawing. A group of American students giggled shrilly.

Fiona rolled her eyes. The light in the exhibition room gave her skin a sickly pallor, but she still managed to look as ethereally perfect as the day he'd last seen her. Damn it, he wouldn't have needed the reminder.

Just to make conversation and not simply stare, he was about to ask what brought her here, but caught himself in time before opening his mouth, because that would have been a tremendously stupid question. The other question of who she was with he swallowed as well.

"Are you about done here?" she finally asked after a few uncomfortable moments.

James nodded. "Yeah." It wasn't a smooth lie, but he couldn't have concentrated on the drawings for the life of him any longer anyway. He'd just have to get the catalogue on the way out.

"Then what do you say we grab a bite to eat? All the anatomical correctness in here makes me crave a steak." She quirked a half-grin. "I need you to relay all the latest gossip from Oxford."

James stuffed his hands in his pockets. He really didn't feel like opening that particular can of worms and much less felt like reminding himself of why he'd missed her like a limb when she'd left, but instead of refusing, he heard himself say, "Why not?"

***

Wanting something close to the gallery, they ended up at The Phoenix after Fiona had ruled out the Mango Tree as too posh for them. If he were honest with himself, that verdict surprised James, because Fiona had liked the posh places back in the day. Both of them on a sergeant's salary, however, had meant that they didn't get to them very often.

She seemed a little more down to earth now, more grounded, somehow. 

The Phoenix, though, fit squarely into his picture of Fiona in London; hip, up-scale but approachable, and much, much too bright. With its light, orange-patterned walls and the powder-blue furnishings offset by scrubbed wood and white chairs it reminded him of a child's nursery, only filled with groups of fairly loud drinkers; a crowd of business people and tourists alike.

The place was packed.

Fiona waved to the woman behind the bar who waved back enthusiastically and, miraculously, not five minutes later a table was cleared for them.

"I take it you come here often?" James asked when he sat their order of Viognier and Laphroaig on the table between them.

Fiona took a sip of her wine and shook her head. "I arrested her once."

James's eyebrows climbed to greet his hairline. "And you get greeted with such enthusiasm for that? My, things _are_ different in the big city."

"Oh, stop, you." Fiona swatted his lower arm lightly. "I got her out of quite the hole she'd dug herself into. She kept saying later that the arrest was the best thing that ever happened to her because it gave her a much needed wake-up call."

"A wake-up call that came with a criminal record?"

A hint of colour climbed up her cheeks. "There ... may have been some string pulling involved."

"Strictly hush-hush, of course," James said with a mock-serious face.

"Of course."

He leaned back in his chair and swirled the whisky in its tumbler. The smoky scent that rose from the mouth of the glass would have made a charcoal burner proud. "Doesn't seem like your style."

She took another sip, then shrugged. "Maybe my style changed."

James's gaze snapped to her face. "Has it?"

It took Fiona a split-second to hide her initial reaction and plaster a surprisingly convincing grin on her features. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

He would, James thought. He really would. Instead of inquiring, though, he raised his tumbler and toasted her. "Here's to secrets."

Fiona studied him for a few seconds, her gaze taxing, then she clinked her glass to his. "Cheers."

The whisky burned its way down James's throat, leaving a bloom of smoky warmth in its wake and reminding him that he hadn't had dinner yet. He knew he'd better take it easy on the hard liquor, but he hadn't felt like beer or wine tonight. After the shock of meeting Fiona at the gallery, he'd craved a whisky and this one hit the spot perfectly.

"So, do you have a Bag Man?" he asked by way of distraction.

"My own sergeant?" Fiona echoed, her voice just shy of incredulous. "Heavens, no." She laughed, and James thought he detected a hint of bitterness in it. "I wish, but no." She paused, gave him a sly look. "Why, are you looking for a new governor?"

"No." James was surprised at the vehemence of this statement.

"Dynamic Duo still going strong then, hm?" Fiona asked, leaning back in her chair to observe him with an unnerving patience. "How long until Lewis retires?"

James shrugged and swirled the whisky again. "A couple of years."

"You don't know for sure?"

"I know what the official retirement age is."

"But you don't know if he'll go sooner rather than later?"

He shook his head and took another sip of whisky, emptying the glass much sooner than he'd planned. 

"Don't know or don't want to know?"

She knew him too damn well. "Both," he said eventually. "I guess."

"Have you honestly never thought about taking the inspector's exam?"

James looked to a couple to their right holding hands over a pie that must have gone cold long ago. "Maybe once or twice."

"But never seriously?"

"Not really, no."

"Why's that?" she asked, leaning forward. "You're smart enough to be DCI by the time you hit forty."

James snorted and rolled his eyes. 

"I mean it." Fiona placed her hand against his arm. Her touch burned through the material of his jacket, the fabric too thin suddenly, too thin by far. "You have what it takes. Why aren't you reaching for more?"

"I'm happy where I am." Which was much closer to the truth than the lie he'd told Jonjo about being happy with his life. He didn't mind working with Lewis as his superior. He got up in the morning and was looking forward to work, no matter how gruesome the case, and that had only started when he'd begun working with Lewis. If he were honest with himself, he was afraid of what would happen with Lewis out of the picture.

"Are you?" Her gaze was scrutinising; she clearly didn't believe him.

"Not all of us wish for the big career, Fi."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't call me that," was her habitual response.

"You never did like it, did you?"

"Smart. You should be a detective, _Jim_." Her smile was sweet as poisoned toffee.

"Touché," he replied with his first unguarded smile of the night. 

Fiona nodded toward his tumbler. "Another?"

James shook his head. "Better pace myself, or you'll have a too easy time dragging all the state secrets out of me." 

Fiona rolled her eyes. "Can't hold your liquor, James?"

"Not as well as you, apparently."

"The things you learn when you walk through the world on three to four inch heels," she said as she looked down her legs to where her feet were encased in heels of an impressive height, "include: learn to hold your liquor enough so you can still walk home instead of totter."

"I'll keep that in mind for the next time I wear heels," James replied. 

Fiona visibly fought a grin - and lost eventually. "Just you be glad that I am mild-mannered and won't throw this glass at your forehead."

"I'm not too worried. You wouldn't damage such a pretty face."

She studied him for a long blink of an eye; long enough to take the light atmosphere out of the air between them. "True," she said eventually. "Rioja, as dry as possible?"

"She remembers!" James mock-applauded.

"I remember a lot," was her parting shot before she scraped her chair back and wove through a litter of tables toward the bar.

James winced. He'd walked into that one all by himself, no outside help needed. When he'd told her he'd need to switch to something lighter, he'd only been half-joking. Being around Fiona had always meant being on his toes, and though a lot of other things had changed between them, they hadn't in that regard. He couldn't afford to get drunk around her.

"So, where did you end up?" he asked when she returned from the bar with two generously poured glasses of wine. Courtesy of the lady behind the bar, James assumed.

"At the Yard, you mean?"

James nodded.

"Narcotics."

"Nice work if you can get it."

"It's not as thrilling as it sounds. I do miss major crime every now and again."

"I wouldn't miss the bodies," James said under his breath as he reached for his glass.

Fiona stared into her own glass. "There's that," she agreed. "But you don't want to know the human tragedies you'll find in our cases, the abysses behind the normal fronts, the things people are willing to do for their next hit. Sometimes I'd prefer a straight-forward murder case."

"You lose your innocence there as well," James said, knowing exactly what she was getting at.

"That's assuming I ever had any," she quipped, but it was half-hearted.

James trailed his fingertip along the rim of his wineglass. "We all did. At some point." The topic was too serious for a first meeting after several years, too serious for a pub by far. He wracked his brain for a good way to broach a new subject but came up empty. _Such a large brain, Hathaway_ , he heard his inner Lewis tease, _and you can't even talk your way out of a tight corner?_

"Says the man who went to a seminary." Fiona grinned at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. The wine had given her cheeks a slight pink flush but he saw that there she was, giving him the out he hadn't been able to find.

James blinked at her for a split-second, then felt his face break into an answering grin. "Don't overestimate the seminary. I only lost mine when I started working for DCI Innocent."

Fiona snorted such a sudden and heartfelt peal of laughter that she had to slap her hand to her mouth to stop herself from spraying him with white wine.

"You're a horrible, horrible punner, James Hathaway," she said when the last giggles had subsided.

"Enough shop talk," he said. He was enjoying the lighter atmosphere too much to go back to talking about work. "Tell me this showing isn't the first time you've taken advantage of living in London."

"What about you?"

"I don't live here," he tried to deflect.

Which naturally didn't work on Fiona. "No, but you're close enough."

He took a large sip of wine. "I leave the big bad city to the tougher ones amongst us."

"In other words, you hate London."

She did know him rather well. He had no wish to leave Oxford, even aside from changing work places and no longer having Lewis as his governor. London was a juggernaut, loud, hectic, violent, and emotionally cold. Then again, it did have some of the best museums in the world. "How did you ever guess?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Stick in the mud."

Speaking of mud... "Ah, so you went to see the Elmeyer exhibit?" he asked, deflecting again, because he had no inclination of steering the conversation in that direction either.

This time, it worked. "Dirt from all over the world," Fiona laughed. "No, thank you." 

Their conversation became lighter once they had exchanged what he considered the respective marking of the territory, and by the time they had finished their dinners, it was going on eleven and people slowly begun to filter out of the pub.

Around eleven thirty, the call for last orders and the bright chime of the bell rung by the pub owner saved him from having to make an awkward exit. 

"Let's go," Fiona suggested, disrupting his ruminations. "I bet you're dying for a cigarette."

"What if I told you that I quit?"

"Then, even without knowing you and knowing that if you ever stopped, the world would probably end, I'd have one look at your twitching hands twirling the spoon for the past half hour and the nicotine stains on your fingernails and would call you a bad liar."

"I knew there was a reason you got promoted," he quipped.

"Exactly." She scraped her chair back with the dry noise of wood on wood and rose to her feet. "And the pay-raise that went with it is exactly the reason I will not let you sneak to the bar to pay for me now."

James blinked innocently at her.

"Don't give me that look, James Hathaway, it doesn't work. This one's my treat."

He raised both hands and mimed zipping his mouth shut.

"Much better."

James watched her weave through the tables, heels clacking. After a short conversation, Fiona handed over money to the woman behind the bar.

As he watched her make her way back, James thought, for the first time that night, about how the rest of the night would go. What were they now? Colleagues? Friends? Old lovers? What was expected of either of those?

"Discount?" he asked when she had returned to the table.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she smiled and winked, all the double-meaning enigma of a sphinx in the curl of her lips, then walked out of the pub ahead of him, leaving with even more questions than answers.

James cursed under his breath and followed her out.

***

He made his decision after a few minutes of walking next to her. Nothing had to come of it, in fact, he didn't want anything to come of it, but this might well be his only chance at something resembling an actual friendship with someone his age. He'd be a damned fool if he didn't take it.

Touching Fiona was easy. It always had been. James had always liked the softness of her skin, her warmth, even when she was at her coldest.

God knew, he'd been bitter when she'd dumped him, but after a while he'd come to the realisation that it had been the right choice for both of them. She'd always wanted more, and he hadn't been ready to give that to her. Even now, years later, he didn't know if he'd ever be ready to.

But she was radiating warmth now, warmth and familiarity. So what if he stretched his hand until his fingertips reached the strip of bare skin on her wrist? A fleeting touch, just to jump-start his memory. Just to remind his masochistic, stupid self how bloody starved he was for skin contact. So what if he bent to breathe in the smell of her hair? It could all be explained away later, he'd had enough to drink to chalk it up to being under the influence.

"James..." she trailed off, but there was a smile in her voice.

He curled his hand into a fist and shoved it inside his coat pocket. "What?" He could play obtuse every now and then and sell it. It never worked on Lewis, but people who didn't know him that closely tended to fall for it. Fiona had never known him as well as Lewis.

She stopped walking and tipped her head up to look at him. Scrutinise him, more like. She'd been good at that, he remembered. Very good at reading people. Possibly that's what got her the promotion along with all the undeniably hard work she'd put toward it.

Maybe that had been the problem. She'd been willing to get somewhere. Opportunistic, an unkind person might have called it. But that would be unfair, wouldn't it? Yes, he'd been bitter about it, but he couldn't blame her, in retrospect. Just because he didn't have the ambition didn't mean that she couldn't have it. He'd never found that ambition, either, never wanted to rise through the ranks and it had taken until Lewis's first mention of retirement that James had been able to pinpoint exactly why that was.

"Where are you?" Fiona asked.

"In London, Fi," he used the diminutive again because he knew she hated it. "I'm not that drunk."

She jabbed a sharp elbow into his side; gentle enough to not hurt but noticeable enough to remind him she didn't suffer fools gladly. 

"Life," he answered, after savouring a few breaths of the nicotine-heavy air from a group of smokers outside of a pub they passed. God, he wanted a cigarette. He was only holding out for her sake, because he knew she hated it when he smelled of cold smoke. "The universe," he added. "Everything."

She shook her head, laughing. There were lines on her face that hadn't been there before. "I've missed you."

"No, you haven't."

The smile slipped from her features. "James -- "

"Don't pretend you did. You don't have to be kind just for old times' sake. It demeans us both." As soon as the words were out he wondered if he could still excuse them with the good old _in vino veritas_.

"Speak your mind, why don't you?" She had her arms crossed over her chest now and looked defensive.

James ran a hand over his head and felt the short hair bristle against his palm. "Sorry," he said eventually. "That was uncalled for."

She still looked at him, unflinching. "But true?"

A smile lifted the corners of his mouth. " A bit, yeah."

"Well, your Holiness," she said, using the nickname she knew _he_ hated and linking her arm with his. "It's high time you put some faith in your fellow humans, not just in God." She curled her hand around his forearm. "I _did_ miss you, you know?" 

As they guided their steps into Buckingham Palace Road, he allowed the smile to turn real, because despite everything that had gone wrong between them, he'd missed her too. Particularly her sharp intellect and her sense of humour.

Lost in contemplation once again, James only took notice of the person running up behind them when it was too late and the bloke had already run into them. Fiona stumbled with the forward momentum and cried out, both in pain and in surprise. James caught her just in time to stop her from falling.

It took him no more than the blink of an eye to realise that she'd just fallen victim to a purse-snatcher, someone who must have watched them from the moment they sat foot outside of the Phoenix. 

"Oh, no, you don't," Fiona hollered before extricating herself from James and running after the bloke at breakneck speed, only to be stopped by one of her heels breaking. Still a few feet away from him, she was crouched, swearing under her breath.

Running toward her, he called, "Are you all right?" more out of courtesy than real concern -- she could handle herself and didn't need a knight in shining armour. All she needed right now was someone with longer legs than her, and James was only too willing to provide that.

"Don't lose him!" she snapped, the other shoe with the heel still on in her hand.

For someone who was likely a drug addict, the bloke was fast, James had to give him that. He dodged the people on the street in a way that made it clear that this wasn't his first purse-snatching. James pushed ahead and willed his legs to carry him faster, even if the alcohol in his system made them feel like viscous lead.

Up ahead, a busy street was coming up and James hated not knowing London’s geography better. One thing was certain, though -- if the snatcher ran into the traffic there, he'd either be run over by a car or James would lose him, so the only chance was to catch him before he made it there.

James pushed forward, ignoring the burning in his lungs and his muscles. The thrill of the chase gave him an energy he hadn't expected to muster.

The distance between them closed. James could hear the snatcher's gasps between his own harsh breaths and the slap of their feet on the pavement. Only a couple of feet now and he'd have him, just a little more --

The door on his left flew open and a loud flock of young, well-dressed but nevertheless drunken Welshmen stumbled out of the Leopard Bar. They tripped the purse-snatcher, whooped noisily, and then gathered in the middle of the pavement -- right in James' way, cutting him off.

He cursed and tried to push through the crowd. Stupid bloody stag nights. Valuable seconds trickled by. Eventually he yelled, "Police, make way!" and they parted, but by that time, he'd already lost sight of the git.

"Sodding hell," James swore under his breath, fighting the urge to kick the nearest rubbish bin. The traffic lights up ahead turned red, and, as though the devil had wanted it, there was such a mass of cars that he had no chance to cross. He started running again when the light finally turned green, even if he knew it was a lost cause. 

He couldn't even give a proper description of the bloke, nothing except for his height and clothes. Clothes that could be easily discarded or changed. What he had was the square root of bugger all. _Great, Hathaway. Just great._

Lost in silent curses, he had to skid to a halt rather than run into yet another flock of people gathering in front of the Bag Of Nails.

This crowd were all standing around a man lying belly-down on the pavement and the blonde woman holding him down. 

Despite the earlier frustration, James couldn't help the amused snort when he recognised her.

Fiona had a knee in the small of the man's back and his arms pulled back, secure in a trained grip.

"Brutality!" the would-be purse-snatcher howled. He was dropping his t's. "My knees, my elbows! My bloody _chin_!"

"Shut up," Fiona snapped, tightening her grip. "Because of you, I broke a pair of heels that cost over a hundred pounds. If you had wanted anything valuable, you would have gone for the shoes, not the bloody purse. What kind of an idiot carries cash in their purse anymore?" She shook him a little. "Huh?"

"I think he skipped that bit in the Pickpocketing for Dummies," James commented, still out of breath, bent over with his hands braced on his knees. 

Fiona snapped her head up to meet his gaze. Some of her hair had escaped her tight bun and curled in her perspiration-dotted face. "Took you long enough. I thought you were supposed to be quick?"

"Only on the uptake," James volleyed back. Someone in the group around them sniggered. "People are better behaved in Oxford. The thieves don't go near cops."

On the ground, the purse-snatcher dropped his head and rested it on the pavement, groaning, "A copper?"

"Should have picked better," Fiona said, still breathing heavily, but looking up at James with a blinding grin. He couldn't help but grin back, particularly when he looked down at her and saw that her shoes were now both heel-less -- knowing that she couldn't follow barefooted, so she must have broken the other heel off as well.

"You didn't have to go and prove anything to me," he commented under his breath as he knelt next to her.

She rolled her eyes. "You're not important enough to break my favourite pair of shoes just to prove anything to you." The casual jab stung and from the way her expression changed, he could tell that she knew she'd hit too close to home. "Can't blame a girl for going ballistic," she smoothed over her earlier words. "My iPhone is in that purse."

"Ah," James said, finding a moderately convincing smile. "That explains things."

"Do you have any cuffs on you?" she asked.

"Didn't think I'd need them tonight," he answered.

Fiona lowered her head and in the light of a passing car, he saw a faint hint of colour creep up her cheeks. She'd liked the cuffs, he remembered. She tried to meet his gaze but he looked away. 

"I'll find a uniform."

***

"If this was your welcome to London, you need to work on your plans a little better, Inspector," James commented when they left the station at a quarter to three in the morning. They'd been forced to go along to the Charing Cross police station since a broken pipe at Belgravia had forced the temporary closure of the nearest station to Victoria.

Fiona scrubbed a hand over her face, while stifling a yawn. "Sorry about all that. Took a bit longer than I'd expected."

James stretched his back. "Don't worry about it. I'll have tales of my adventures in the big city to tell for the next year."

The WPC who had taken their statements poked her head out the door. Her eyes were tired but alert. "I have a car coming round here just now, Ma'am," she said. "Do you need a ride?"

"My car's round the corner from the Yard," Fiona said without waiting for James's answer. She looked down at her feet. "I'd appreciate it." She glanced at James. "Coming?"

He nodded and they were soon on their way. They spent the short ride listening to the young, uniformed officer chauffeuring them chatter about the differences between policing in Manchester and London and how much he preferred London to anywhere else. James shared a sardonic look with Fiona as he extolled Scotland Yard's professionalism in comparison to any other police department.

Fiona thanked their driver while James bit his lip. Then they stood silently while he drove away before breaking into laughter. 

"Give you a lift?" Fiona asked.

"I, ah," James began, cleared his throat and tried again. "I hadn't planned on staying this long. I don't have a hotel." He wouldn't have needed one if they hadn't gone to dinner; Oxford was a mere 90 minute coach ride from London.

They started walking. The sound of her no-longer-heeled shoes on the pavement was interesting, a dry, rasping, sort of aborted sound that distracted him for a while. It made James realize just how authoritative high heels made many women sound. Or maybe he was just too bloody tired to gear up more brainpower to concentrate on other things.

Her voice startled him when they reached the car park. "I meant that I can give you a lift home if you like."

"What, back to Oxford?" he asked, lifting his head to look at her over the hood of a dark blue Nissan Micra. She hadn't bought a new car, then. It still had the same scratches on the passenger's door from when a bicycle had come into too close contact with it back in Oxford. "Didn't you say you had to be back in the office by eight?" He shook his head. "That would leave you with less than an hour of sleep."

She shrugged. "I'll be fine."

"I know you will, but it's unnecessary. How about you drop me off at Victoria and I nurse a cup of bad coffee until the next Oxford Tube runs? I promise my virtue will remain intact."

She rolled her eyes at him "When's the next one due?"

He stifled a yawn behind his hand. "They generally run on the hour, if I'm not mistaken."

Fiona glanced at her wristwatch and frowned. "We can try," she said, sounding doubtful. "But I did read something about construction work."

The car moved swiftly through the night-darkened streets of London, which no matter the hour, were never empty. Coloured lights blurred together after a while and James felt his eyelids droop. Past three in the morning. Always darkest before the dawn, tinted with the never-asleep lights from off-licences and night-buses, neon and the warm glow of the illuminated sights. It made him miss the quieter streets of Oxford.

Alcohol, exertion, exhaustion and the cosy warmth of Fiona's car conspired to drop James into a dozy drowse that slid right over into sleep without him ever noticing.

***

"James. _James_."

He breathed in deeply and nestled his head closer against the wall beside him.

Somebody shook him gently. "James." The voice sounded amused now. "Rise and shine."

James jolted awake and blinked his eyes open. "Sorry, I must have, uhm..." Not a wall, a car door, window up, and the cross-belt half cutting into and half supporting his face. He could feel the mark pressed into his cheek.

"It's fine," she waved him off. 

James peered out the windscreen and frowned. "I hate to state the obvious, but this," he gestured outside and cleared his throat, "doesn't look like Buckingham Palace Road."

He heard rather than saw her smile. "That might be because it isn't."

"So, where are we, and why?"

Fiona removed the key from the ignition. "You were asleep when we reached Victoria," she explained. "I saw the Tube leaving just as I pulled into Grosvenor Park." James tensed. "You were so fast asleep you didn't even notice me stopping, so I brought you back to mine."

He cleared his throat again. "Yours."

"I do have a flat here, you know?"

He rolled his eyes at her. "And here I thought you'd be sleeping on a lilo in the office."

"Higher rank pays better," she said, ignoring the jab and countering with one of her own. "I can afford a two bedroom flat in London these days. Small but all mine."

Fiona opened the door and gave him a questioning look. "Well?"

"Well what?"

Another eye-roll. "Well, unless you want to stay down here, you might as well come up."

"I don't -- "

"I know you don't. But I'm asking you. The couch's free and even though it's just a cheap Ikea one, it's bound to be better than some plastic chair at Victoria station."

James shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "I really don't think -- "

"No, stop," she cut him off with an impatient gesture. "I'm too tired for this. You can sleep in the bloody bathtub if you like, but you're coming up now. At least that way I won't have to worry about you being mugged or murdered."

He twitched a half-grin, noting her slight Irish lilt making a comeback when she was angry. "Point taken."

"Well, then." Fiona fished her keys from her jacket pocket and he couldn't help but think that it was a good thing she at least had this one on her. James had never been good at picking locks. If the snatcher had succeeded, they'd have had to spend the night at the station or pay a horrendous price to have the door opened by a night-time locksmith.

The lightbulb in the musty-smelling hallway didn't work and it took Fiona a while to unlock her door. The only sound in the dark was the tinkling of her keys and the slight scraping of metal over wood when she missed the keyhole. James felt certain that she normally opened this door blind. Eventually, though, the key slotted home, turned in the lock and the door swung open under a light push. 

Light flooded the hallway when she flipped the switch and blinded him momentarily, stopping him in his tracks. 

"Are you still deciding whether you should stay or go?"

James shook his head, walked inside and closed the door behind him. "No."

The flat smelled like her. James had always been an olfactory beast, and to him, smells brought back memories faster than pictures. A flood of memories he'd believed forgotten washed over him. Not all of them unpleasant. He gave himself a little shake and followed her farther into the flat. It was a tiny, bright place, tidy except for the litter of books on the couch table. Books, a bottle of wine and a glass hinted at the way Fiona usually spent her nights.

It reminded him of his own flat, only that at his place, it was usually case files, not prep for yet another exam.

"I'll make us some tea, then I'll nip to the shower. I'll put a towel and a toothbrush out for you."

"Cheers."

***

He'd folded himself on the couch and fallen half-asleep again when she emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe and her hair loosely done up in another bun. The strands that had escaped it were a darker blond now they were wet.

"It really is too short for you, you know?" she commented when she took in his bent legs.

He shrugged. "I'll be fine." He honestly was past caring. "Better than the bathtub." 

"Well, if you insist... " She walked a few steps but he heard her slow down, then the sound of bare feet on thick carpet came back and she stood in the doorway again, the look on her face one that he remembered as her soldiering on through something she wasn't at all sure about expression. "My bed is much bigger," she said slowly, her gaze fixed to the left of his shoulder. There was a pause before she added, this time looking at him directly, "Big enough to share."

James gave an explosive, near-embarrassed laugh. "Are you coming on to me, Inspector McKendrick?"

She laughed with him and her eyes crinkled at the sides. "I'm too tired for witticisms."

"Fi... " James trailed off, not really knowing what he was trying to say. This is a bad idea, maybe? It was, but even though he knew, his skin sang out at the prospect of touch.

"I'm not seeing anyone right now," she stated, keeping eye-contact with him. Her meaning was clear. "Are you?"

James hesitated, thought of his short-lived, unspectacular thing with John on his last vacation and answered, "No." He still kept in touch with John, and while the companionship had been nice on a cerebral level, it had never gone beyond some rather awkward sexual encounters that had left James completely cold. Though John liked to touch even afterward, and didn't race for the bathroom to wash up and leave immediately, which had been nice.

Fiona laid a slim hand on his forearm. "Then come on. Don't make me ask again."

James mock-saluted. "No, ma'am."

"Don't," she said, suddenly looking serious and achingly lonely. "Just come with me."

After he'd taken a quick shower himself and brushed his teeth, he climbed into bed beside her. The glow from the street-light outside filtered through the half-open blinds and threw parallel shadows on the white sheets and the gentle slope of her body underneath them.

Maybe he should just try again with someone he knew. His brief stint into homosexuality hadn't been all that rewarding, though he still couldn't say if that was because he hadn't known John long enough or because he really wasn't into men after all. The sex had been okay, but not earth shattering or even memorable. Kind of like most of his encounters before.

For endless minutes, they lay next to each other like frightened teenagers; half a foot between them and yet every atom in their bodies gravitating toward the other.

Eventually, she moved and he reached out and James remembered: touching Fiona was easy. Always had been. He just wished he had more time to savour the feel of her skin under his hands and against his body. But they were both too tired and too aware of what they needed. Well, what she needed. James would have been content just running his hands over her skin until they fell asleep.

But he was human and she remembered all too well how to arouse and where to touch him and James reciprocated because he'd missed this. He'd missed her hands on him, feeling her heartbeat against his, the scent of her skin. He wanted to take ages to refresh the memory.

Instead, they fell into old habits and well-known routines and rushed toward completion, her slim legs wrapping around him, sliding down on him after she'd rolled a condom on, him slipping inside her body, eliciting a sigh from both of them. Again, James wanted to slow down and savour the feel of being close to her, of her skin against his, close, so close, but she started moving, riding him harder and faster in search of her own release. Instincts overrode his brain when he felt her contracting around him, her orgasm taking her on a groaned sigh. He followed too quickly after, once more underwhelmed by his own climax.

Fiona was asleep by the time he returned from the bathroom.

James sat on the edge of the bed for a few long minutes, breathed in the smell of warm sheets and sex, and watched her through tired, burning eyes.

"You stupid bastard," he murmured to himself and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.

He'd had the craving under control until tonight.

But now it was back with a vengeance. 

He should have known better. Deciding to be weak for a few more hours, he slid under the sheets next to Fiona, pulled her naked body against him and made sure his body was flush against hers, skin on skin. 

Something in him unravelled at the contact.

James fell asleep content, her heartbeat under his hand.

***

James woke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. He breathed deep and drifted for a while, trying to shake the sense of displacement, trying to remember where he was.

The creaking of a wardrobe door had him opening his eyes, and, seeing Fiona standing in front of it with her hair hidden under a towel-turban, clad in nothing but a skirt and a bra, jump-started his memory.

"Morning," he rumbled, aware that his voice wasn't cooperating just yet.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," she greeted him with a smile.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Quarter to nine," she said while almost disappearing inside the wardrobe.

James sat bolt upright. "What?" He scrubbed a hand over his hair and made to throw back the sheet and duvet before he remembered that he was naked underneath. That felt stranger in the light of day than it had last night. "But you had to be in the office by eight."

"The upside of being a DI," Fiona smirked over her shoulder. 

"Downside of being a DS," James replied. He felt the blood drain from his face. "Lewis will have my head."

"No, he won't," she said. "I had the report from our arrest last night faxed over to your station. Lewis is a smart man and will put two and two together when he sees when the report was finished and filed. I doubt he's expecting you before noon."

She hadn't called in, James noticed, giving him the chance to save face and avoid any ribbing from Lewis or anyone else. He cleared his throat. "Thanks."

She emerged from the wardrobe with an emerald silk blouse in hand. "You're welcome." She slipped it on and he watched her closing every button, hiding more and more of that warm skin he had touched last night. "But if you want to make it around noon, you should get up and in the shower."

He shifted uncomfortably. A bedspring creaked. "I, ah..." He indicated the duvet and himself.

"Do you have to be so Catholic?" she laughed. "I mean, still?"

He shrugged one-shouldered.

"You'll never change, will you?"

"Would you want me to?"

Fiona walked over to the window and pushed apart the blinds to peer outside. James caught a glimpse of grey drizzle. On her way back, she stopped next to the bed. "No." She rested her hand against the nape of his neck and repeated, "No."

He leaned into her hand, his eyes slipping closed, savouring the contact, soaking up the warmth. It was a split-second too late that he realised what his instinctive reaction to her gesture had been. Just a split-second in which he laid everything bare he normally had under tight wraps. 

"That hasn't changed, either, has it?" Fiona asked. Her tone was mild, tentative. She let her thumb glide along the side of his neck.

James kept his eyes closed, hoping she'd let it go.

Of course, luck was never on his side where Fiona was concerned.

"You need to start asking for what you really want, James. You'd be surprised how much easier life gets."

James tipped his head up to look at her. "What do I really want, Fi?"

She rested her hand back against his neck and rubbed it down over his shoulder blades. Unbidden, he moved into her touch before he could stop himself. When he did, he let his chin sink to his chest. Heat climbed up his cheeks.

"Point in case," she murmured. A step closer had her closing her arms around him and pulling him against her. "You stupid idiot," she whispered against his hair. "Why did you never say anything?"

"What was there to say?"

"How about the truth?"

James snorted. "And who would want to hear that?"

"You consider it a weakness, don't you?" She let go of him and knelt on the bed, while her gaze searched his face. 

James evaded her look. Of course it was a weakness. No one wanted to hear about a bloke who was so touch-starved his skin hurt from it. No one understood how touch was more rewarding for him than sex ever could be. That the only reason he had sex was to get to touch someone. Who would understand? Who wouldn't think him a freak?

"Why do you hide it?" Fiona asked.

Once again, James snorted and shook his head. "You can't honestly ask me that question."

"You're not a freak for wanting touch."

"Let it go, Fi." He shifted on the bed, wanted the conversation to be over, to get back in his suit and out of her flat. Back to Oxford. Back to safety. Touch-starved, familiar safety.

"It's not a weakness to need," she continued and placed her hands on his shoulders.

"Let it go." This time, it was a warning, not a plea. He slammed his walls back in place and took her hands off his shoulders.

"Suit yourself," Fiona replied. Her face had hardened. "But you know what the real weakness is here? Locking yourself up so much because you're too cowardly to admit what you want even to yourself."

"All right. So I'm a coward. Not the first time you've called me that." He threw the sheets back and stalked to the bathroom naked, resisting the urge to slam the door.

James saw her shadow underneath the bathroom door. It hovered for a minute, then disappeared.

When he came out of the bathroom, he found the flat empty and a note next to a still-warm mug of coffee. "Stop hiding," it said. Placed on a Weetabix box was a key resting on another note. "Lock the door," was scribbled hastily on it. "Keep the key."


End file.
